William Beaty wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Sep 2006 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >> >> Hey Bill, >> >> This is fantastic! > > > Then take a look at THIS one: > > http://amasci.com/graphics/tesblb1b.jpg > > It's from "Electrical Experimenter" from 1919. June issue, I think. > > I always thought that these old Tesla bulb devices were the same as > "plasma globes" with fingers of glowing gas inside. But instead, the glow > penetrates the glass and extends into the room as a feet-long glowing > discharge! Most probably it is a tesla-coil lightning bolt, but one which > is following a beam of x-rays, so it becomes silent and constant, not > branched like normal lightning. The x-rays pre-ionize the path. And > because the x-ray flux would be different during the positive and negative > parts of the AC, it probably functions as a rectifier, so it would put out > some milliamps of DC into the room. (And therefore would become > sensitive to magnetic fields!) > > Apparently this answers questions about the material below. If Tesla > mounted such vacuum bulbs on the tips of his high-voltage antennas, they > would produce ion beams which visibly glowed, and which functioned as > antennas having not just long lenghts, but large surface areas (large > capacitive coupling to distant emitters!) > Recently on TV there was a show about 'sprites' -- this is high altitude lightning which shoots up into outer space. Could the Earth be acting like a giant Tesla bulb? Harry
